Office survival

Yes, Gentle Reader, I am wasting my time with LJ again instead of working. Between you and me, this is a lot more interesting way of spending time than dealing with all the paperwork that comes across my desk.

I’m not sure how many updates there will be today (as if it mattered), or whether or not I actually have anything to say, but the appearance of working is important, and provided that I type in Word, occasionally pausing to look baffled or concerned (both of which come naturally to me anyway), I can get away with this for some time before actually doing anything productive. In a few minutes, my cigarettes and I, in the company of the sudoku pages of The Times will disappear downstairs for a few minutes’ break.

It’s a hard life.

Later on today I shall write a little more of the NWO character I’m working on, and then to finish, I may excavate the Pre-Cambrian levels of my in tray to see what got labelled as urgent but was forgotten and had no repercussions. This is an important task, for it enables me to prioritise my time wasting. The ability to spot something somebody purports to need immediately, but in fact is of no consequence either to them or anyone else is a vital time management skill. Similarly, there are monitoring exercises which can be filled out in advance, provided that you take care to leave a little room for improvement, by which I mean try as you might, some stuff will miss deadline, so you just have a believable failure rate which isn’t too large to cause criticism and is big enough to allow for improvement. That should fluctuate over a seven month cycle, adjusted for the comparative quiet of mid July and all of August, so that that no-one notices a repetitive pattern building up.

You can do that on a spreadsheet, if you try to be creative enough.

You know, until I wrote it down, I never realised what hard work it can be, being lazy.

I’m off for a smoke and some sudoku action.

Office survival

Yes, Gentle Reader, I am wasting my time with LJ again instead of working. Between you and me, this is a lot more interesting way of spending time than dealing with all the paperwork that comes across my desk.

I’m not sure how many updates there will be today (as if it mattered), or whether or not I actually have anything to say, but the appearance of working is important, and provided that I type in Word, occasionally pausing to look baffled or concerned (both of which come naturally to me anyway), I can get away with this for some time before actually doing anything productive. In a few minutes, my cigarettes and I, in the company of the sudoku pages of The Times will disappear downstairs for a few minutes’ break.

It’s a hard life.

Later on today I shall write a little more of the NWO character I’m working on, and then to finish, I may excavate the Pre-Cambrian levels of my in tray to see what got labelled as urgent but was forgotten and had no repercussions. This is an important task, for it enables me to prioritise my time wasting. The ability to spot something somebody purports to need immediately, but in fact is of no consequence either to them or anyone else is a vital time management skill. Similarly, there are monitoring exercises which can be filled out in advance, provided that you take care to leave a little room for improvement, by which I mean try as you might, some stuff will miss deadline, so you just have a believable failure rate which isn’t too large to cause criticism and is big enough to allow for improvement. That should fluctuate over a seven month cycle, adjusted for the comparative quiet of mid July and all of August, so that that no-one notices a repetitive pattern building up.

You can do that on a spreadsheet, if you try to be creative enough.

You know, until I wrote it down, I never realised what hard work it can be, being lazy.

I’m off for a smoke and some sudoku action.

From the Walkman:

As done from time-to-time, six songs played at random by my Network Walkman:

Stay Up Late: Talking Heads – classic New Wave goodness

Help Me: Joan Osborne – surprisingly bluesy number from one-hit wonder. This was not the hit (points if you can remember what it was without Googling).

Two Young Lovers (live): Dire Straits – straight forward Rock’n’Roll by now unfashionable 80s masters. Featuring the sublime Mel Collins on Sax.

First Breath: Richard Thompson - taken from his incredible The Old Kit Bag CD. The Times (I think) said that folk music is just not big enough for Richard Thompson. They were right.

Lost in Space: The Lighthouse Family - undemanding mellow pop tunefully sung, pretending to be contemporary soul.

Three of a Perfect Pair: The Crimson Jazz Trio - interesting jazz interpretation of (in my opinion) a lesser King Crimson track. Better than the sub-Talking Heads original, lacking the early Belew touch and all the better for it. Takes time to get into, but worth the effort.

The doubters out there should note that not a single one of these pieces is a prog arrangement, though the last one started life in that genre before Ian Wallace and chums launched into it.

From the Walkman:

As done from time-to-time, six songs played at random by my Network Walkman:

Stay Up Late: Talking Heads – classic New Wave goodness

Help Me: Joan Osborne – surprisingly bluesy number from one-hit wonder. This was not the hit (points if you can remember what it was without Googling).

Two Young Lovers (live): Dire Straits – straight forward Rock’n’Roll by now unfashionable 80s masters. Featuring the sublime Mel Collins on Sax.

First Breath: Richard Thompson - taken from his incredible The Old Kit Bag CD. The Times (I think) said that folk music is just not big enough for Richard Thompson. They were right.

Lost in Space: The Lighthouse Family - undemanding mellow pop tunefully sung, pretending to be contemporary soul.

Three of a Perfect Pair: The Crimson Jazz Trio - interesting jazz interpretation of (in my opinion) a lesser King Crimson track. Better than the sub-Talking Heads original, lacking the early Belew touch and all the better for it. Takes time to get into, but worth the effort.

The doubters out there should note that not a single one of these pieces is a prog arrangement, though the last one started life in that genre before Ian Wallace and chums launched into it.